


Where Is He (Me)?

by nyanbacon



Series: Restless Eternity [5]
Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Existence Dysphoria, One Shot, Reincarnation, what kind of alternate universe? who knows, yeah. that but a whole one shot, you know that feeling where something seems just slightly off but you can't figure out why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:22:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22750051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyanbacon/pseuds/nyanbacon
Summary: Six years of culinary school later... who was Kai really?He certainly didn't know.
Series: Restless Eternity [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1552921
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	Where Is He (Me)?

When everything was okay was when it all felt  _ wrong _ .

Kai didn’t know how to describe it, or how he’d gone nearly thirty years of his life getting this unsettling feeling that he was doing something wrong when everything felt right. It’s not like there had ever been hints that something  _ was _ wrong with how he was doing things. Everyone he knew was happy.

But then, when he thought about it, late at night, he was almost convinced he knew the  _ wrong _ people. He looked around at familiar faces when he was out with his friends, and they were familiar, but they weren’t the same as… as what? What does he have them to compare to? They just weren’t  _ right _ .

Or his sister. She had grown up and gone off and left him to pursue his own path- she was a successful engineer, married, and she was  _ happy _ . And he was happy for her. And he liked being on his own, on his own path, doing his own thing. But there was some instinct that told him it was  _ wrong _ . It was wrong to be halfway across the world from her and every day it tried to drag him down into a rut he had fallen into way too many times. No matter how many times he called her, and how many times she convinced him that it was fine to crave family as he did, it still felt wrong. And he knew, deep down, that it wasn’t a craving for his family that he missed. It was  _ more _ than that, so much more, like he was supposed to be with her no matter what, regardless of their emotional closeness. He just had to be with her. A physical stabilizer, a crutch.

And sure, that made sense. He wanted someone to be with. He’d never dated, after all, and lived in a house on his own (he didn’t really count his lizard as company), so he could pass off that need for his sister as just a side effect of depriving himself of social interaction (an issue that had cropped up when he realized that he didn’t know the people around him as well as he thought he did and he kept calling them ‘Zane’ and ‘Cole’ and  _ who the hell were those people _ ?!).

But then it was the odd thoughts when he was working that made him think that he was supposed to be less than he was. Six years of culinary school and a successful restaurant later, and every word of praise just made him think that he shouldn’t be here- that after all this work it would make more sense if he was still a struggling bakery chef. 

And then-  _ and then _ \- came the weird feeling he got whenever he wandered into sword shops. How he even got there was a question in and of itself, but then there was an intimate connection as he wandered through the aisles. He’d never touched a sword, much less developed an attachment to the instrument, so why,  _ why _ , did it feel like  _ this _ was where he belonged? Not in a kitchen, but somewhere surrounded by metalwork? 

He hated going to weapon stores now, even more than he had before, and went out of his way to keep from going anywhere near them. 

He didn’t  _ understand _ . He didn’t understand what was  _ wrong _ . And the more and more he thought about it, the more and more it happened. At first, it was just when he was at high points in his career, or during a good phone call with Nya where the two of them were watching a movie on some software Nya had slapped together to allow them to pirate movies. But now that he was able to identify it, it felt like it was  _ everywhere _ . He couldn’t look at any dojo master with a brown suit on and be content thinking it was just another dojo master in a brown suit. Jasmine tea wasn’t  _ just _ jasmine tea, there was something more to it. Something that made him crave it despite the fact he would spend the rest of the night on the verge of tears. 

It got to the point that his hands trembled whenever he tried to cook, which he didn’t understand. Six years- six years!!!- of culinary school, and he had never hesitated like this. He wasn’t a  _ natural _ at cooking, but he had worked hard, and he’d never  _ hesitated _ or felt like he would ruin everything if he tried to chop a tomato. Impulsively, on the inside, he wanted to quit his job, but he knew he couldn’t, and then he wondered why, after so many years of determination, he wanted to give up that easily. Why did he suddenly feel so willing to just… throw it all away?

He’d forgotten his friends’ names. They’d all been replaced by fuzzy images of who they were but also weren’t, by names that started with Z and W and a double L. He didn’t know anyone with names that started with those letters, but nowadays, it didn’t feel like he really knew anyone.

Not even his own sister, who lived in Japan, as far away from New York as possible, understood, or helped, or made him feel less alone. And it’s not like… it’s not like he could keep going to her for this.

Just  _ thinking _ that made him feel sick with guilt. He had never been one to withhold anything from Nya. She was his crutch as much as he was hers, but now, suddenly, in the wake of the worst sense of Existence Dysphoria he’d ever had, he felt like he had to take care of this himself. 

Not that he knew what his ‘self’ was anymore.

He felt lost. What had become of him? The kid that strove for everything he got and felt proud of it, felt like he had reached his peak and was happy with it- where was that? Where was  _ he _ ? Had he ever been here?

Where was Kai?

_ Who _ was Kai?


End file.
